[ale] OT: Migrating off dying HDD

[johnmills at speakeasy.net (John Mills)]

Geoffrey -

Thanks. That's roughly what I had in mind. I only need an hour or two more 
life out of it, and at the moment it just seems to quit talking without 
internal trauma, so I will probably get several chances.

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Geoffrey wrote:

> John Mills wrote:
> 
> >  3. Other than a fan, any clever ideas to keep this #$%&!! working long
> > enough to dump a good fraction of its data? (I plan setting it on a
> > cold-block and see if that helps.)
> 
> If it truly is overheating, there are a number of things you might try. 
>    I had a box that was poorly cooled, so in the interim, I pulled the 
> side off and had a 9" fan blowing on the cpu.  This made a 10C degree 
> difference in the temperature registered by the cpu.
> 
> If you have the old drive out of the laptop (sounds like you do), get an 
> ice pack or fill a ziplock with ice.  lay a towel over the ice 
> pack/ziplock.  Place the drive on top of the towel.
> 
> Not items that I would recommend for long term solutions or for a drive 
> you plan to keep for any amount of time, but good quick solutions to 
> cool a device that is overheating.
> 
> 

-- 
 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu